"The Aramco Dream Chaser space shuttle completed its first unmanned full-state flight, returning to the ground after 24 hours in space."

"Sierra Nevada: Another unmanned full-state flight in November and the first manned flight in December, using a reusable Falcon 9 rocket."

"Musk will add two additional offshore recovery platforms to provide high-frequency support for manned launches of the Dream Chaser Space Shuttle."

"ABC: Aramco has the space shuttle again, and NACA is leading Aramco back to the top."

"The island nation of India wants to jointly develop the super-heavy rocket 'Star of Asia' for the moon landing, which will send astronauts from the two countries to the surface of the moon in 2020."

On October 12, the space shuttle Dream Chaser landed on the runway of the Kennedy Space Center, and after five years, the space shuttle landed here.

The Dream Chaser, which has a relatively mature design, basically did not have any accidents in this flight, and the four simulated dummies were in very good condition throughout the whole process, and they could fully carry out manned launch missions.

Director Claire praised the R&D team of Dream Chaser and made a decision that Dream Chaser would be able to make its first manned flight after one more unmanned flight.

As a space shuttle with a much heavier dry weight than a spacecraft, it is indeed remarkable that the Dream Chaser can fit nine people in a space with a maximum take-off mass of no more than 15 tons, and all parts are pursuing lightweight.

Of course, there are some slightly imperfections, that is, the manufacturing cost of the first Dream Chaser B1 is overspent by 35%, but fortunately, this is a routine operation, as long as things fly, Congress will not account for such a small amount of money.

And the Dream Chaser did not spend much money as a small space shuttle, and the large space shuttle is a gold-swallowing beast.

After the FETS program, the Space Shuttle Endeavour at the Kennedy Space Center has been modified for two months at the Boeing 747 Games at the Boeing Factory.

Although there is no nuclear engine suitable for it, in fact, the nuclear engine team has only been formed for a month, and it will be in the air base in the Nevada desert to sort out the research materials left behind that year, and it will definitely be next year to straighten out the technical route for development.

However, there is no need to worry too much about the progress, the 8 different types of nuclear engines manufactured that year have technical data and even the preservation of finished products, even according to the performance at that time, they can be used for Endeavour, and the progress will definitely be rapid after recovery.

On the contrary, the carrier aircraft is very troublesome, and Boeing's engineers first removed all the heat insulation tiles, which are backward technologies, and must be replaced with newer, lighter, more durable, and larger new heat insulation tiles.

Then there is the interior, which also has to be completely dismantled, and after dismantling the body with only an empty shell, it is necessary to continue to dismantle the internal pipelines and replace them with new ones, which is more troublesome than making a new body.

Boeing made it clear that the first test flight of the Endeavour would never happen earlier than July 2017, unless it wanted to send seven more people to death.

The exterior heat insulation tiles were removed, the interior was dismantled, the pipes were dismantled in the middle, even the landing gear had to be replaced, and the only body that could remain unchanged had to be overhauled and replaced with key parts, because the nuclear engine was heavy, and the change in the direction of the center of gravity and structural strength had to be reconsidered.

The Endeavour is almost changing inside and out, and it is difficult to relate to the 1992 Endeavour.

And in order to do this, Boeing opened its mouth for $3.5 billion.

Half of the money was used to distribute the research and development expenses of other manufacturers, and many of the manufacturers that produced parts for the space shuttle have gone out of business, and the technical data is naturally missing, and it needs to be redone.

NACA knows it's a waste of money and can't do anything because the companies that have failed are not state-owned enterprises, and they don't have any need to keep their core technology on file with NACA.

Therefore, it is often said that it may be true that NACA can't build the Earth Star 5, although most of the main design NACA has it, but if the outsourcing manufacturer is not there, those technologies will definitely have to be developed from scratch.

But in general, the FATS and NSTS programs are progressing faster and smoother, unlike the Artemis program, which is full of problems.

This time it's not a problem with the SLS rocket, the SLS is currently making good progress and can make its first flight in time, the Orion spacecraft was completed during the Constellation program, and the lander has a few years to go.

The trouble comes from the Artemis Project participating countries.

The current Artemis program is not a huge organization with 29 member countries in the future, except for the island countries, that is, Aramco and some European countries (mainly belt and hip countries).

As a result, some time ago, the Aviation Development Commission announced that it was willing to sell engines and recovery control systems, so that ESA had an additional "Veneto 1" rocket, and also planned its own moon landing program.

In particular, Europe's largest industrial country and the strongest country in aerospace technology, if they also choose to engage in the "Selene" program, it will definitely interfere with the progress of the Artemis program.

The Orion spacecraft's service module is manufactured by Airbus and Defense, which provides automatic docking and attitude adjustment capabilities for the spacecraft, while Aramco mainly takes the manual docking and robotic arm-assisted docking routes.

Europe, on the other hand, has mastered this technology through ATVs (European Automatic Transfer Aircraft), in addition to excellent capital transfer technology.

Artemis plans to carry out a total of six manned missions, that is, at least six service cabins, and Aramco pays the price of just three seats.

You know, the 6 Orion spacecraft have 24 seats, and the provider of the service module only got 3 of them.

And the cost of each service module built for the Orion spacecraft is about 200 million euros, and now it is almost 250 million dollars, which is not a small amount of money for ESA.

Fortunately, ESA is not very independent now, and it is too scattered internally and easy to clamp down, so NACA chooses to wait and see for the time being.

The island nation is different, at the beginning of the month, during a morning visit to India, there were JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries senior personnel together, and then a week later, the island nation and India, which do not know what PY deal was reached, actually announced that they had reached a joint intention to land on the moon?

The island nation, India, manned landing on the moon.

Together, these three words don't look reliable.

But the island nation seems to be playing seriously, and has already made public that it wants to jointly develop a super rocket with a take-off weight of 1,500 tons with India: the Star of Asia, JAXA code H-X (10).

The core stage of the Asia Star rocket will use a 5.2-meter-diameter rocket body from the H2 and H3 series rockets, and the core stage will be equipped with four LE9-X open-type expansion cycle 130-ton hydrogen-oxygen engines, bundled with two 3.2-meter-diameter, 45-meter-high five-stage solid boosters upgraded by India according to the S200, with a single thrust of 875 tons.

The total thrust is 2270 tons, the take-off mass is 1650 tons, the low-earth orbit capacity is 54 tons, and the lunar transfer orbit capacity is 23 tons.

According to their plan to land on the moon, they will launch a rocket in India, launch a manned spacecraft made by the island nation for testing, and the island nation will launch a rocket around the moon to land a person on the moon.

The last two rockets were built by the two countries and launched within a week apart, with India launching their lander and the island nation launching a manned spacecraft to rendezvous and dock in lunar orbit for the lunar landing.

Look...... How does it look like copying the Artemis Project??

(End of chapter)